00:00hi everyone welcome to the a6 insi
00:01podcast I'm sonal for this episode had a
00:04nice book to Benjamin Witness senior
00:06fellow and governance studies at the
00:07Brookings Institution and
00:09editor-in-chief of the now popular
00:11lawfare blog which covers issues of
00:13national security our conversation
00:16covers the law and technology of warfare
00:18from military drones cyber security and
00:20encryption to geopolitics and the future
00:23of violence which is the title of a book
00:25he co-authored with Gabriela Bloom we
00:27also discuss the evolution of media
00:28including expert in academic blogging in
00:31the age of the internet this episode was
00:32recorded as part of our DC on the road
00:34podcast series last month for those that
00:36are new to these we also did this last
00:38year when we interviewed Ezra Klein in a
00:39box if you want to check those out as
00:41we're live no not really live I can't
00:42think in that same joke over and over
00:43again can't stop using it we're doing
00:46the podcast from DC on the ground and we
00:50have as our special guest today benjamin
00:51Witt is welcome everyone thanks for
00:53having me I've been reading law fair for
00:56a long time but I have to confess
00:58however that unlike your audience which
01:00has grown Post Trump I'm one of those
01:01people who reads less about politics now
01:03than before it's fascinating because
01:05there was actually New York Times
01:06profile about you earlier this year that
01:09shared your readership as of early
01:12February it was more than all of 2016
01:14yeah so we have had I mean quite
01:18literally exponential growth between
01:20last year and this year and it's a
01:23really interesting effect of the Trump
01:27first candidacy and then election that
01:30he generated enormous interest in the
01:34issues that we cover what we call hard
01:37national security choices the executive
01:40order yeah you know that post is
01:41actually interesting because it's among
01:43other things it has some high altitude
01:45comments on the executive order but it
01:47is also a technical dissection of why I
01:51thought this executive order was going
01:54to give rise to a lot of litigation
01:56opportunity it broke down a lot of very
02:00kind of Picayune aspects of
02:02it's not just what you're covering it's
02:04also the way you're covering it and I
02:06think this there's a thirst for the
02:07technical also as a part of a kind of
02:09relief from the partisan from the
02:12opinions from the distrust of what we're
02:15getting along with it and that's there's
02:16this kind of grounded factual technical
02:19mystery so I think that's exactly right
02:21my colleague Ken Anderson who is a law
02:23professor at American University very
02:26early in the history of the site he said
02:29to me that the reason law Fair was so
02:31effective was that it never made an
02:34apology for speaking as a voice of
02:36authority in this environment in which
02:39there is this real interest in voices of
02:42authority as well when you say you have
02:44that authority that's not an accident
02:45you've been at this for years
02:47you've been building this expertise and
02:48is that grounded in law why is it called
02:51law fair so the name law fair is a bit
02:55of a historical accident we were
02:57originally going to call the site fog of
02:59law about to launch it we found out that
03:06the great scholar Michael Glennon had a
03:08book coming out called fog of law and so
03:11we had to switch gears and we used law
03:14fair instead law fair is a word with a
03:16bit of a weird history we use it as a
03:19kind of a sort of pun on war over law
03:23and law about war right it's sort of the
03:26dual meaning really interesting what a
03:29fair law fair yeah right exactly so it
03:31was designed to capture sort of conflict
03:33law as a subject but also you know
03:36conflict over the law right the thing is
03:39that in certain other contexts
03:41particularly on the hard right in the in
03:45the American political context and in
03:48the Israeli national security vocabulary
03:51the word has rather a different meaning
03:53which is as a kind of dismissive term
03:57for generally human rights advocates who
04:00use the courts as a way of disabling
04:03national security functions and so so a
04:06lot of people will refer to law Fair as
04:08a kind of use of law as a weapon of war
04:11and that's not for the framework in
04:14which we've ever used it
04:15pause on that for a moment so it you're
04:16not a lawyer and it's a law fair block
04:18right I am not a lawyer I have never
04:20been a lawyer and I occasionally think
04:23about taking the California Bar which
04:25you can do without going to law school
04:27because every time California because
04:29every now and then somebody writes when
04:31they want to sort of dismiss something
04:33that I've written without you know
04:34actually engaging the argument they'll
04:36say Benjamin witness who isn't even a
04:42it would take a lot of work so I am by
04:46background a legal journalist I actually
04:48got interested in national security law
04:50as a result of this institution that
04:53nobody at the time had ever heard of
04:55called the FISA Court the FISA Court is
04:57a court constituted by Congress in the
04:59Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of
05:011978 and it does basically two things it
05:04considers applications for wiretap in
05:07the national security context and it
05:09also supervises certain programmatic
05:12surveillance activity particularly
05:15related to domestic captures of foreign
05:19to foreign communications that are
05:21passing through servers in the United
05:23States so it's an area of law that is
05:26both highly technical and
05:30institutionally very peculiar because it
05:32is that it's its own court that is set
05:35up purely for this purpose and I got
05:37interested in in the mid-1990s after the
05:41Aldrich Ames case where Aldrich Ames was
05:43a spy at CIA for the Russians and after
05:47the Ames case the Justice Department
05:49quietly went to the Congress and asked
05:51the Congress to expand the jurisdiction
05:54of the FISA Court to include certain
05:57physical searches that is you know
05:59actually breaking into somebody's
06:01apartment and searching their stuff
06:02which by the way just for a point of
06:03contrast is pretty normal and typical in
06:06law enforcement in like domestic matters
06:08there's nothing abnormal about going to
06:11a court for a physical search there's
06:12something peculiar about a court that
06:14has electronic surveillance Authority
06:17and no physical search Authority so they
06:20tried to regularize that and
06:21successfully did in 1994 and when I left
06:24the post which was at the end of 2006 I
06:27left to write a blow
06:28and I came to Brookings law fair was
06:30kind of a an outgrowth of that work
06:33combined with work that my colleagues
06:35Jack old Smith and Bobby Chesney were
06:37doing the part that's fascinated me
06:39about this narrative more broadly is it
06:41ties in to this larger theme of the
06:42evolution of media and blogging in
06:44general and self-publishing and that
06:47time that period there was this complete
06:49explosion blogging became a thing
06:51bloggers started their own media outlets
06:52but it's also tied to the phenomenon of
06:54the longtail where people are craving
06:55niche expertise and you can self-select
06:58and find these people on the internet
06:59where you have this infinite shelf space
07:00to find them but the second half of this
07:03the fact that it went beyond a niche to
07:05a little bit more mainstream interests
07:07is I think really interesting
07:09and besides 9/11 like what are some of
07:11the other epochs in policy and political
07:14history that have kind of led us there
07:16like what Snowden be at is that list so
07:18Snowden Snowden is actually the the
07:21second to last of these so first a huge
07:23percentage of the site was about the law
07:26of detention the issue at hand was
07:29Guantanamo and the sort of developing
07:31law of detention and should you close
07:34Guantanamo under what law should you
07:37hold people there under what law should
07:39you hold people somewhere else
07:40over time that set of issues faded the
07:43salience of the issue diminished the
07:46parameters of the dispute narrowed and
07:48the capacity to get the final thing done
07:52was reduced and reduced to the point
07:57that it wasn't even clear how meaningful
07:59it would be if you got it done you close
08:02Guantanamo you move 40 detainees to the
08:04United States you're still holding the
08:06same 40 detainees under the same legal
08:09authority so just as that set of issues
08:11sort of started to fade away who was
08:13replaced in the public's in the in the
08:16debate with issues were around drones
08:18and by the way there were multiple
08:20aspects of that debate there was a
08:22targeting debate right you know when is
08:25it legal to kill somebody even like a
08:26different continent when that person is
08:29in a war zone fighting you but also when
08:31that person is not in a war zone maybe
08:33not fighting you but you think he's a
08:36terrorist who's going to that's a very
08:38complicated set of legal targeting
08:40but then there's also the you know the
08:42flying scary robot question right which
08:45is you know does it make a difference if
08:48you are targeting somebody using a
08:51weapon that is to one degree or another
08:53autonomous and that question itself has
08:57a set of you know valence --is as you
09:00get more and more and more autonomy
09:03including you know some very futuristic
09:05questions like what if the targeting
09:07Authority itself is autonomous right and
09:09this should be obvious but we're really
09:11talking here about drones and the
09:12military strikes contacts like not
09:14commercial drones on the one hand you're
09:16talking about battlefield drones right
09:19weaponized battlefield drones but you're
09:21also talking about the CIA's use of
09:23drones in non battlefield settings such
09:26as such as for example you know we did a
09:29whole bunch of drone strikes in Yemen
09:31was not considered an active theater of
09:32conflict at the time right and then
09:34there's also the question as the
09:37technology proliferates including
09:40proliferates to the level that you know
09:42you can go to Best Buy and have your
09:44choice and once you do that you know the
09:47only difference between you and the CIA
09:50is carrying capacity you know your drone
09:54doesn't carry as much payload and they
09:57have much better targeting capability
09:59than you do and more sophisticated
10:01weapons that they can attach to the
10:03thing yeah I mean there's a complicated
10:04history in general with anything that
10:05talks about this when you talk about
10:06off-the-shelf components being used in
10:08military settings when you talk about
10:10military technology trickling down to
10:12consumer use there's a whole tension
10:14throughout the entire history of tech
10:15where I think this stuff plays out right
10:17but the salient point here is that among
10:21the epics we had 9/11 then you did the
10:24coverage around drones and drone strikes
10:26and the wrestling questions around that
10:29so arguably those questions have not yet
10:31faded although a number of drone strikes
10:33have has certainly faded yeah but then
10:36just as that debate was kind of cresting
10:39you had the Snowden revelations and that
10:41was an enormous set of discussions of
10:44surveillance authorities surveillance
10:46TAC how those interact with one another
10:48and then just as that was starting to
10:50fade you had the Apple FBI
10:54a set of dispute encryption around
10:57encryption now along the way there are
11:00all these other issues that arise for
11:04example people get charged with material
11:06support for terrorism the government
11:07asserts a national security FOIA
11:09exemption to protect a program and then
11:12there are wonky things like the Alien
11:14Tort Statute which is an area that you
11:17know human rights groups and US
11:19corporations care a great deal about and
11:22most other people have never heard of
11:24and so that's the kind of
11:25bread-and-butter stuff of the site over
11:27the years in the course of covering that
11:30we assembled a remarkable collection of
11:35people with a lot of enormous ly precise
11:39technical expertise so that includes
11:41people like Susan who came to us from
11:44NSA and as one of the you know genuine
11:46government side surveillance law experts
11:49it also includes you know major
11:51academics we try to give a platform to
11:54write in a more applied setting you
11:57actually have some among us some of my
11:58people my folks I used to edit at Wired
11:59Nicholas Weaver I think it was a first
12:01version republished him when he was a
12:03student at Berkeley then yes well he's
12:04done he's done you know amazing work and
12:07then we huge percentage of law fair
12:08everyday is written by this army of
12:12amazing law students I have to say on
12:15the meta front again talking about the
12:16media trend underlying this at both
12:18Hannah and I are editors of expert
12:20voices and essentially one of my theses
12:22around this is that it's actually really
12:25depressing to me that media dilutes
12:28expertise with third party third-person
12:30voice yeah there should always be
12:31first-person voice for experts and the
12:33only block between first-person experts
12:35in mainstream is this ability to
12:37translate a little bit more broadly
12:38right so people who aren't just so
12:40inside their field yeah can hear at
12:42drugs from that word exactly to where
12:44editors come in and yeah a lot of what
12:45expert opinion editors do but to your
12:47point on the mainstream media landscape
12:49there's actually on a lot of places
12:50where those people have a platform to
12:52speak so I actually think your model of
12:54having law students is exactly the right
12:56replicable thing that a lot of media
12:58people should be doing so I think it's a
13:00really interesting thing that even as
13:02some of these students have become real
13:05voices in the conversation that
13:07people have not tried to replicate it I
13:10mean not just students but even serious
13:12academics are an untapped resource part
13:15of the part of the problem is that the
13:17blogs generally speaking that try to
13:19give voice to academics are generally
13:21not run by journalists so they don't
13:24have a journalistic sensibility in terms
13:26of what they're pushing people to do and
13:28I also think part of the problem is the
13:29insularity of academia I know that there
13:32isn't an obligation for many of these
13:34fields our sense of obligation to speak
13:36to somebody who is less and less
13:38initiated reader and also a willingness
13:40to be edited in some cases to reach a
13:42broader audience right so I think one of
13:44the things that really disciplines
13:45lawfare is that it is written for the
13:49practicing National Security Letter
13:51right but the practicing aspect I think
13:53does turn it outward more than do you
13:56know what I mean well so I think the way
13:58we see our job is our job is to be a
14:01resource that gives a politically
14:03diverse range of genuine expertise on
14:07questions that they're thinking about
14:09and and I think that process is
14:12disciplining as to the academics who
14:15write for us because you know you're not
14:18talking to your class you're not talking
14:20to a captive audience you're talking to
14:21somebody who might have to be making a
14:24decision the other thing is that the
14:25authorities grounded you know you are
14:28bipartisan nonpartisan and that you
14:30cover all this range of perspectives
14:31so-called left-right in fact the
14:33funniest line from your New York Times
14:34article is that for a while you were
14:36disrupt beautiful to the left yes what's
14:38up with that look we started as three
14:41people on our many more than three but
14:44we were thought of as the conservative
14:46flank of the conversation I read it
14:49actually frankly until a year ago and so
14:51so I always thought that was wrong you
14:55know I I mean it was right in one sense
14:57and that we were who we were and we'd
14:59argued the things that we'd argued and
15:01some of them were politically you know
15:03not where the center of gravity of
15:05liberal opinion was and look I think of
15:07myself as a centrist but a lot of people
15:10don't think of me as a centrist and so
15:12you know there was an element of truth
15:14to that in the last year that perception
15:16has flipped somebody tweeted the other
15:20left just professional and I burst out
15:23laughing because a year ago we might
15:25have hoped to get the law fair isn't
15:27right just you're doing something right
15:31if you're constantly being confused for
15:34being partisan in another direction job
15:36is actually not to have political
15:38opinions yeah I mean we do and that's
15:40fine but our fundamental job is to
15:43analyze difficult legal problems I have
15:45a very big problem with people who
15:48neither know nor care about what the law
15:51requires of them in their positions and
15:53present them in a way that people can
15:56find useful let's just start off with
15:58likes a hit list of topics like
15:59cybersecurity what's one thing you want
16:00to say right now about that topic we
16:02have over the last year accidentally
16:05created a partisan issue out of
16:07cybersecurity we need to undo that how
16:10did that happen what do you mean it
16:11happened because of the Russian hacking
16:13it used to be that everybody agreed that
16:16cybersecurity was a real problem
16:18overseas and domestically and we need to
16:21figure out how to a secure our systems
16:22and be change our incentives to better
16:25protect against those bad actors and now
16:28we have an environment in which the
16:30President of the United States denies
16:32the the fact of certain important
16:35significant cyber activity and before
16:38you can argue about what to do about it
16:41which is or about you know cyber
16:44vulnerabilities you have to have this
16:46pre argument argument that has you know
16:50that has to do with what political side
16:53you're on what you think about how you
16:55feel about Vladimir Putin and what you
16:58think about WikiLeaks and I worry that
17:01that is a is going to make a lot of
17:05cyber security questions much much more
17:07difficult as a policy matter to address
17:09at least at the federal level I'd like
17:11to hear your view and just like a
17:12statement on an encryption okay well I
17:15would say don't rest easy on this the
17:18issue will come back oh it wasn't even
17:20gone what I feel strongly about is not
17:23any particular outcome of the
17:26conversation but that we actually have
17:28the conversation in a serious way the
17:31problem with what we do
17:33is that something awful happens and then
17:37we we have it for a period of time until
17:39we let it go away so what's happening
17:42now in this period in which we're not
17:44having the conversation is that more and
17:47more and more phones are showing up in
17:49law enforcement on open Apple and this
17:53is affecting more and more law
17:55enforcement agencies more and more often
17:57and we're having no debate about it and
18:00the problem with that is then one big
18:03thing will happen and we'll have a giant
18:07spasmodic debate about that particular
18:11phone sounds like a dam being waiting to
18:14exactly and dams bursting is a really
18:16bad way to make policy do I think it's
18:19necessarily the case that Apple loses no
18:21I don't I actually think they might win
18:25if they lose I think they'll lose in
18:27litigation not in legislation the
18:30scenario in which Apple loses or some
18:33other provider loses is that they lose
18:36in litigation and then they have to go
18:39to Congress in order to change the
18:41legislative landscape to undo what
18:43they've lost in litigation and at that
18:45point you'll see a compromise of some
18:48sort it's fascinating because you made
18:50that entire response all about policy
18:53and politics and there's an incredibly
18:55technical aspect to it I'm remembering
18:56the history of the crypto Wars crypto
18:58war phase 1 crypto war phase 2 this is
19:00arguably crypto Wars phase 3 and it's
19:02actually more to your point a war of
19:03attrition because it's like right these
19:05little battles being played out versus
19:06like one big deep discussion and I'm
19:08going away but where's the technical
19:11part of the debate where we talk about
19:13whether backdoors are even possible it's
19:15a violation of math I mean I understand
19:16the concerns about law enforcement
19:18devices going dark so-called but it's
19:21just frightening to me that tech isn't
19:22at the center of that right so look one
19:25of the one of the very frustrating
19:27things about this debate is that
19:28everybody feels that way about the other
19:31side I agree with you in the tech world
19:33there's a sense that you're arguing
19:35against math and if you talk to people
19:37on the other side who are living with
19:39this problem every day what they will
19:41say is Apple and you
19:43these companies do a terrific job
19:45building in all sorts of recovery
19:48backdoors for purposes of service
19:50delivery and the reason this is
19:53impossible is that they want it to be
19:55impossible and you know there's lots and
19:58lots of argument on all sides that the
20:00other side just doesn't get it
20:02yeah and I I actually think everybody
20:05should pause before saying the other
20:07side just doesn't get it people should
20:09spend some time to try to look at it
20:11from the point of view of their
20:13interlocutors in the conversation
20:14because these are all functions in
20:16society that we want performed well yeah
20:20I think our position is Pro National
20:21Security Pro Tech and finding sort of
20:24the ground that reaches that point of
20:26view okay integration that's the next
20:27one on their list well I am NOT an
20:29immigration expert I do feel very very
20:31strongly that it is important not to
20:34confuse the victims of terrorism with
20:38terrorists yeah generally speaking the
20:40victims of terrorists have the same
20:42ethnicities and religious backgrounds as
20:46the terrorists who kill them and so when
20:48you look at people either in the
20:50immigration context or other context and
20:52you make rash judgments about who should
20:55be admissible who should be excludable
20:57who should be deportable you are to the
21:00extent that you don't do a very good job
21:02of what the military calls distinction
21:05and just and actually discrimination
21:08which is interesting word it has a
21:10negative valence in all contexts except
21:13military targeting where it's a positive
21:15command to do it right you want to
21:18discriminate between your targets and
21:20the people around them if you don't do a
21:22good job of being discriminating you're
21:25very very likely to be reinsuring
21:28victims of terrorism so I just think
21:30there's a moral call as well as legal
21:33call to be to be right okay since you
21:35covered it quite a bit drone strikes and
21:37drones the entire history of the last
21:40hundred years of warfare is a history of
21:42being better at discrimination right and
21:46we are more militarily effective and
21:49more protective of civilians as a result
21:51of of Technology and warfare just think
21:56sets of military actions against
21:59al-qaeda related targets and in Pakistan
22:01one when you know the 3,000 people that
22:05we killed with drones and one when the
22:09Pakistani army went into the Swat Valley
22:10and displaced a hundred thousand people
22:12right the civilian disruption death
22:16injury is different by orders of
22:18magnitude the military effectiveness is
22:21also different by orders of magnitude
22:23and these are these are classic hard
22:27national security choices are there
22:29other kinds of tech helping that
22:30discrimination oh there's there's lots
22:33and lots I mean that's the whole story
22:34of modern armaments is you know
22:37precision munitions and we've looked at
22:39this and developed anxiety about it
22:42because the moment you are closest to
22:45perfect discrimination it starts to look
22:48like assassination instead of what it
22:50really is which is conventional military
22:52targeting with less just collateral
22:54damage yeah look I wrote with Gabby
22:57bloom the basic thesis of it is that not
23:00merely can the US government using a
23:02drone strike you from 5,000 miles away
23:05and kill you but every individual in the
23:08world can strike each other from the
23:10same distance cyber attacks
23:13we spend a lot of time in in in the book
23:15and I've actually done a lot of work
23:17subsequently on a form of sexual
23:19violence that we call sextortion that
23:21you know takes place transnationally and
23:24and involves one perp victimizing very
23:29large numbers of often underage or tied
23:34to sex trafficking no actually it's it's
23:37a it's a form of I think of it as sort
23:40of remote sexual assault in which people
23:42either steal or poke somebody into
23:46giving them nude or sexually like Shirin
23:50well it's like revenge porn except the
23:52stuff doesn't get released and then you
23:53use the picture revenge I mean porn
23:56blackmail in order to produce it sort of
23:58extort the production of pornography and
24:00so this is in a Silicon Valley sense the
24:03first time sexual violence has ever been
24:06scaleable we have perps
24:08that are doing you know thousands of
24:11victims all over the world but how do
24:14they get these do they hat they do
24:15actually sometimes they hack
24:17sometimes they catfish sometimes they
24:20trick people they they pose as a
24:22boyfriend or a if you get into one of
24:26their friends accounts so we actually
24:27did I about a year ago published a study
24:31a Brook study of 86 torsion cases and
24:35they accounted for a minimum of 1,300
24:39victims and I think more probably more
24:43growing exponentially it's a huge
24:45growing problem but for present purposes
24:48the relevant fact is that it's remote
24:50like a drone strike right it's a remote
24:53form of violence it's available it's
24:55scalable and the power to do it is in
24:58the hands of the individual right and so
25:00the question that we took on in the book
25:02as a sort of governance question is how
25:05do you govern a world in which anyone
25:07can attack anyone from anywhere and the
25:09idea is that the technologies give
25:11people both heightened capacity to
25:14participate in defense but also
25:16heightened vulnerability to attack
25:18there's a really interesting way of
25:20framing it because we tend to talk about
25:22the asymmetries and how technology
25:23levels asymmetries but you're talking
25:25about it from like 360 angles right it's
25:27it's technology levels all the asm.js
25:29right and so you end up with a world of
25:32many to many threats and offenses and
25:34the question is if you think about that
25:37from a liberal political theory
25:39tradition in which you know the
25:42government your government is
25:43responsible for protecting you well if
25:46you're being sexed orded from you know
25:48botswana and your government has no
25:51functional capacity to do anything about
25:54in what sense is you know in what sense
25:58is that your government what is the what
26:00is your government owe you in that
26:02situation what does the government of
26:03Botswana owe you and that's resonating
26:05because it's essentially displacing the
26:08location of government from a physical
26:10it's not physically co-located anymore
26:13corpses in the cloud and some that
26:15exactly and so you know the the question
26:18that we dealt with in the book is how do
26:21imagine governing such a world in which
26:23governments corporations individuals all
26:26have both of ulnar ability to remote
26:28transnational attack but also capacity
26:31to engage in it well and also like what
26:32good is this perfecting discrimination
26:34right if everybody if it's proliferated
26:37everywhere if everyone is waging war on
26:39everyone and there's no governing so
26:41just to give you a like a very tangible
26:43example of this that you've like all
26:45experienced and an email from somebody
26:47in Nigeria yeah who is just itching to
26:50give you ten billion dollars in gold
26:51bullion and if you think about that
26:53which is such a routine part of our
26:55existence these scams those that was
27:00unthinkable twenty years ago right that
27:02somebody could attack you from Nigeria
27:04much less that you would be attacked
27:05every day from Nigeria and that's a sort
27:08of kind of harmless in most cases
27:10example of of the world of many to many
27:13threats and defenses but who do you look
27:15to for defense against that you don't
27:17look to the government you look to the
27:19provider or spam filter email you're
27:21vulnerable to individuals that you never
27:23imagined yourself to be vulnerable to
27:25been you look to a very different model
27:28of defense than you then then we all
27:31grow up in sort of civics thinking of
27:33you know what the function of government
27:35is who's responsible for exactly the
27:38whole axis of how we used to define
27:39things has just been turned upside down
27:41inside out if you're not left-right
27:43we don't have Democrat Republicans like
27:45do you have like any working mind
27:46frameworks for what labels we could
27:48apply yes I want to answer this in my
27:50non law fair capacity but look I don't
27:54care if somebody's a liberal or
27:56that's not predictive to me anymore of
28:00how they're going to be interacting with
28:02our current political reality
28:03the relevant question to me is when you
28:07look at this populist wave that we're
28:11experiencing do you look at it on the
28:14other hand as areas where there are some
28:17points of commonality and some points of
28:20difference do you look at it as you know
28:22with a large reservoir of sympathy but
28:24reservations the answers to those
28:26questions will not break down according
28:28to left-right lines I agree and and I
28:31think the broad question is really
28:34how do you feel about elites versus mass
28:37movements interesting that's a framing
28:40you would apply it's a spectrum it's the
28:42spectrum I think about it's an imperfect
28:45understanding of it to be sure but I
28:47think it works much better than a
28:49left-right axis the other axis that's
28:51useful is how do you feel about
28:53foreigners and so then the question
28:55becomes along what axes do you share
28:59that sense that foreigners are fleecing
29:02do you share it in the immigration space
29:04do you share it in the trade space do
29:06you share it in the you know financial
29:08sector space you share it with respect
29:10to our allies and and our overseas
29:14military commitments one of the things
29:16that you know most alarms me is
29:20us-versus-them conception of the world
29:23and and I think one way to understand
29:26the divisions in our politics right now
29:28is across how many sectors does that
29:29seem like a congenial way to you the
29:32observer to understand our place in the
29:34world okay Russia adversary foreign
29:37power don't confuse it with anything
29:40else it is led by a person who does not
29:43have the United States his best
29:45interests at heart and who wants to
29:48reestablish hegemony over a region that
29:51involves a lot of countries that don't
29:53want to be subject to Russian hegemony
29:55and also has interests in protecting
29:59certain regimes particularly in Syria
30:01that we really don't have an interest in
30:03protecting and so the authorities to
30:06exercise US government power in the the
30:10confrontation with Russia is going to be
30:13a predominant theme over the next few
30:14years you described some of your
30:16colleagues having a plaque made the
30:17handmaiden of power yes maybe in it so
30:21back when the world thought of law fair
30:24as you know a group of right-wing
30:26apologists for government power Glenn
30:29Greenwald wrote a piece about me I guess
30:33back in German with it's not even a
30:36lawyer yeah major criticism of me was
30:39not that I wasn't even a lawyer it was I
30:41forget the exact words that he used but
30:43my distillation of it was that he called
30:46handmaiden of power and so we we used to
30:50joke around that I was a handmaiden of
30:52power and I actually just taught a class
30:53on national security law at Georgetown
30:55which we called handmaidens of power and
31:00so you know when my managing editor
31:02Welles Bennett left a year and a half
31:05ago left the site he presented me with a
31:08plaque which was a you know fake of
31:10course handmaiden of power award from
31:13the intelligence community thanks for
31:15telling the company line you've been a
31:16handmaiden of power ever since well no I
31:18even tweeted an image of it at which
31:20people immediately took seriously and
31:23that's something called me allowed a
31:25joke on the internet exactly we have a
31:27little joke around now that's not the
31:29way people see us anymore but it is
31:31still what we call ourselves that's
31:33great well then thank you for joining
31:36the a 6nz podcast thanks for having me
31:38it was fun by the way I know you have
31:39like a helmet did you bike over here no
31:41I said wait yeah that's my my principal
31:47mode of transportation I mean just like
31:49why not a bike you know it's Washington
31:51it's it some of the year here it's
31:56unbelievably hot and humid and I just
31:58don't really want to show up for work
32:00drenched in sweat and I get exercise
32:02lots of other ways and besides I I like
32:05being outside on the Segway you know
32:07adults yeah adults always think you're a
32:09dork but children think you're a god and
32:12that's a trade I'm totally comfortable
32:14that's great well you got a go segue
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